


and the stars look very different today

by thesilverarrow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Maybe a little maudlin in places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: There were a lot of reasons Martha liked being in 1969.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Martha Jones
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52





	and the stars look very different today

**Author's Note:**

> This story came about because I imagined what might happen while they were stranded in the past during "Blink" (3.10). But this probably diverges from even that.

There were a lot of reasons Martha liked being in 1969. Really, she liked all their trips to earth's recent past, how it was familiar but excitingly strange. This time period, though, was electric.

Recently, 18 year olds had been given the vote. The abortion act just came through. Homosexuality was legal. Here at home, there was the Troubles. Abroad, there was Viet Nam. The Americans were about to land a man on the moon. (Her moon, _their_ moon.) Maybe it had to do with those things.

Or maybe it had something to do with them potentially being stranded forever here.

Not that it was all good. In fact, sometimes it was horrible. People stared as they walked down the streets together. She had to explain to him that it was because she was black and he was white. He was predictably annoyed by her silly earth culture and its silly social mores. It only took one ugly incident -- one nasty word shouted from the opposite side of the street -- to make him take the whole thing seriously. His eyes had darkened the way they do when he's on the verge of turning cold and scary. There's something of the angry god about him sometimes. She just pulled his coat sleeve and tried not to let her own anger show on her face. She's been through this particular roller-coaster of denial and indignation before, when she's dated white men. Sadly, she knows the way to smooth those things down.

On the other hand, for some reason she doesn't bother to hide her impatience with the chauvinist attitudes all around her. They're not as obvious as a hateful word aimed in her direction, but they make her feel small anyway. She's thankful she shares a flat with a man who doesn't treat her like she's his intellectual and biological inferior, even in the ways -- as a non-Galifreyan -- she actually is.

The hardest part is leaving behind her medical schooling. There are so many things these people don't know. Even if there weren't, even if medicine hadn't advanced a bit in forty years, she would still know more than the average person about keeping a person healthy. It's how she got her current no-money, mo'-problems job sewing up wounds and administering paracetamol and ill-gotten antibiotics at a local clinic. Actually, clinic is too nice a word for it. It doesn't matter, though. People there listen to her, and they don't ask her how she knew that man's bullet wound was a through-and-through or that woman's appendix had burst. Just like she doesn't ask where the wounds come from. Doesn't matter. _Do no harm_.

She isn't always sure what the Doctor does with his time. As itchy as being moored here in the late 60's has made her, it's even worse for him. He listens to a lot of music. He's discovered he likes Credence and Johnny Cash and hates psychedelic rock. Except the Beatles. He got unreasonably melancholy when he realized their breakup was on the horizon, despite the fact that he already knew it would happen, has already happened, or is happening -- however it is that he understands time.

At any rate, he likes music. He has a bad habit of singing under his breath as he cleans the dishes. Usually, it's "Suspicious Minds," just because he discovered the song annoys her, especially when he does his own backup singing. Once, when he didn't realize she was in the flat, she caught him singing along to the crappy little radio they bought. He stuck with "Me and Bobby McGee" even though he hadn't yet heard it enough times to know all the words.

But, yes, the Doctor does housework...sort of. Loves cleaning dishes and going to the laundry; will not touch a broom and avoids taking the rubbish out. Turns out he's almost like a regular person if you have to live with him. If you're used to traveling with him anyway, you already know what quirks of personality to expect. She thought they'd be magnified, but instead she finds he's mellower with her.

The world, though -- that, he's more annoyed with than usual, because he can't run away from it, and he can't conquer it in an epic battle or a single moment of daring, one on one. She's thankful they have no television since the news only makes him crazy. The longer they're here, the more he loses perspective and becomes one of them, in a way. Instead of letting him dwell on the latest depressing stories in the _Times_ , she gets him to read to her. He doesn't just like reading books, he likes hearing them spoken aloud. They take turns choosing. Sometimes, they take turns reading, but she'll never be as good as he is.

They share a bed. It was weird at first, but it was a necessity. Really, it doesn't matter so much, since he doesn't sleep very often. When he does, though, he seems to wait until the nighttime, to lie down with her. He doesn't say anything, certainly doesn't touch her, just strips down to his undershirt and pants and crawls under the blankets and dozes off. Sometimes, though, he's already awake when she wakes up, and he's lying staring out the window. Once, he was looking at her, and he got up before she could ask him why.

At any rate, she's used to being close to him now. She's seen what's underneath that suit of his, more or less. She knows what he smells like and how he sounds when he sneezes. She's even seen him with wet hair, freshly out of the shower. She watched him paint the kitchen yellow wearing jeans and a t-shirt and no shoes. He's not gotten any less ridiculously attractive for all that. It's sort of a problem, especially since she's beginning to think he might be looking at her differently.

She's not entirely sure, though, until the day she gets home from a shift waiting tables at a diner a few blocks away. She expects he'll be out, but she finds him propped up in bed.

"What are you doing?"

He cocks his head to the side, looking confused. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"What makes you think I'm going to be taken in by your answering a question with a question?"

"What possible chance do we have, then, of breaking the cycle, if neither of us is willing to resort to the declarative?"

"Okay, seriously, what are you doing?"

"I'm having a bed-in."

"What?"

"John Lennon and his Yoko are having a bed-in, and I thought I'd try it out. All they do is--"

"I know what a bed-in is. What I don't know is how you can possibly think it will work?"

"Work? Who said anything about work?"

"It's for peace, isn't it? They're trying to get attention."

"Peace?" He looks genuinely astonished. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"That's barmy."

"But true. Much as I favor peace, nobody's going to pay us any attention."

He frowned, but he quickly shrugged and said with a warm grin, "Nevertheless, I need a Yoko."

"No."

"Okay, fine. You can be John, even though I am clearly the better fit."

"No, it's-- Seriously, this is ridiculous. You're just going to stay in bed? And you want me to stay in bed with you?"

"Why not? No different from loafing on the sofa."

"Very different, actually."

"How?"

"Mr. Smith, I know you're not this ignorant about earth culture."

"Ms. Jones, what makes you think I don't know exactly what I'm doing?"

His gaze suddenly comes down to a perfect focus, which would have excited her once. On some level, it probably still does, mainly because it's focused on her. But it's also very likely just ego, brilliant stubbornness for its own sake.

"That's what worries me," she says.

"Why?"

"You almost never know what you're doing, do you?"

"Not until I'm doing it," he replies with a small smile. His voice is small but a nice, shivery kind of low when he adds, "But that doesn't mean I'm not certain."

And there it is. Idle innuendo -- well, he's the master of that. But this kind of serious widening of his stupid wonderful brown eyes and it's all too --

"Oh my God." She's only thought the blood was rushing to her face before. "This is how you do this? You finally decide you want to take me to bed, so you call me Yoko and say, hop in? This isn't a joke, you know."

At that, he sits up, instantly furrowing his brow in worry.

"I do. I really do." He shakes his head. "No, strike that. Actually, I don't know." He ducks his head so as to no longer meet her eyes, says, "I think...I wanted to be able to pass this off as a joke if..."

"If?" Her voice squeaks. It's all she can do to keep from laughing kind of hysterically. "Are you mental?"

"No, I'm not mental," he replies with a roll of his eyes. "How am I to know if you...?"

"If I what? Wanted to sleep with you?" Slightly annoyed now -- and unfairly, because she's mostly annoyed with how innocently he wonders if a person could find him attractive -- she says in a huff, "Well, last I checked, I've been sleeping with you."

"And I've been sleeping with you." At this point, he finally begins to let his own annoyance show. "Which I don't need to do, by the way. Lying in a bed, in the dark, doing nothing."

A bit dramatically, he flops onto his back again.

"What?"

After a pause, he says, "I thought eventually we'd..."

"What? That I'd jump your bones just because you're nearby?"

Another pause, this one longer, then: "Yes?"

"How are you possibly this...passive-aggressive?" A nasty thought drops like a stone in the pit of her stomach. "Are you...?"

"Am I...?"

"How do I know you're...you? You know, not some kind of clone or shape shifter or whatever."

"Come here and find out," he replies, smiling widely, playfully -- and for the first time since she's known him, real intent.

She comes to a stop at the foot of the bed.

"This is crazy," she says.

"Crazier than teaching Shakespeare how to do a disarming charm? And having it work?"

"Well, I suppose it's less crazy than you being a human, and me being a servant to keep an eye on you."

"Oh, Martha," he says, and the easy smile falls from his face.

"Seriously, don't." She can't help it now; she sits down beside him, taking up his hand before she can be nervous about it. "That's not why I mentioned it. I chose to. I am choosing. I've been choosing."

"I don't think sometimes."

"Part of your charm."

"I'm serious," he says with a sigh.

"So am I. You're not weighed down by all our human bullshit. It's quite lovely most of the time, really."

"You watched over me."

"You trusted me to do it. And for the record, you were still perfectly charming, even having forgot everything about who you really are."

"Who I really am? But, really, who-- Wait, did you say charming?"

She rolls her eyes. "Even when you're driving a person round the bend."

"Can I kiss you?" he asks suddenly, but for all the world like he's asking what planet she wants to go to. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not a serious question.

She raises her eyebrows, taking her hand back so she can poke him in the ribs. "You didn't ask the first time, you know."

"No?"

That was when it didn't matter, she thought. For either of them. They were strangers on the bleeding moon. She hadn't even wanted to kiss him until it happened. Until recent weeks, she's had time to put that notion aside, enjoy this insane thing they do where they hop through time and space, solving problems and making trouble, crying in frustration and laughing with joy. With every opening of the TARDIS door into a new world, she feels a momentary panic, but it's easy enough to marshal it when he offers his hand and smiles.

Her hand comes to rest in his again, and she asks, "What do you think about, then? I mean, when you're lying there in the dark, not sleeping?"

"Oh, loads of things," he replies. "Particle physics. Lost languages. The technique for a perfect three-egg omelet. The lyrics to all the songs on _The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust_. You know, 'This is ground control to Major Tom.'"

"Not on that record."

"No?"

"Before. And if we're talking space songs, I'm partial to 'Rocket Man.'"

"Bit early for... well, for any Elton John, really."

She opens her mouth to remind him that, really, it's too early for _Ziggy_ , too, and for "Space Oddity." But she's done with distractions.

"Doctor," she says.

He sighs, turning her hand over in his like he's figuring out not what to say but how to say it. Finally, he sits up again, pulling his knees up toward his chest. Holding her hand between his two, he says:

"I worry about us being stuck here. I mean, I hate it, I really do, but I've been all over. Literally. You've just started your life." He puts on a small smile. "Of course, I have been stuck on your Terra before, and that turned out okay. However long the duration, your being here means I'm not alone, so that's something."

"I can't imagine you've ever been really alone. Never met a stranger and all that."

"You'd be surprised. Not all my traveling companions are quite as observant as you."

"If by observant you mean stubborn."

"Yes, precisely. Not since Ace." He sighs, adding, "And Tegan."

The silence threatens, so she says a bit awkwardly, "So that's what you think about."

He shakes his head.

"Not all of it."

Then he kisses her hand and murmurs:

"I think about the rich brown of your skin and how soft it looks. The way you smell. All the sharp brilliance in that brain of yours. Your kind hands. How easy it would be to reach out and take hold of you."

She is surprised she can make her voice work, but she manages to say, "Okay."

"Okay to which bit?"

"You can kiss me."

And he does, short and soft, experimental. Then he kisses her cheek and her forehead. He's about to kiss her mouth again, really and truly this time, but he pauses, almost as if he's suddenly not sure of himself.

She smiles, turning her head and saying into his ear, "For the record, it always would've been very, very easy."

He lets out a huff of air, a charmingly nervous giggle, then he takes her face in one of his hands and kisses her like he means it.

Later, they lie in bed, listening to the sounds of the street through their open window. Tomorrow, she will get up and serve people bad coffee and give a young mother clandestine antibiotics and try not to think about never seeing her family again, at least not in her own time. Somewhere north of the city, her parents, still teenagers, are waiting for the same rain and not yet thinking about each other, much less a daughter.

"Do you think we could stay just like this until the moon landing?" he says, breaking into the comfortable quiet of the room.

"When is it?"

"Next month."

"That would be a serious bed-in. And, really, what do you care about one of our little rockets landing on the moon?"

"It's a great moment in human civilization. Any civilization, really. To leave your orbit and set foot on a whole new world."

"Honestly, the moon wasn't that interesting."

"No?"

"Well, not for being the moon."

She feels herself drifting off to sleep, but he doesn't move. After a few minutes, though, he starts humming a song, but she's too far gone to figure out what it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Space Oddity."


End file.
